


Seaflowers

by viceindustrious



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-19
Updated: 2011-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreams of the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seaflowers

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure if this will make sense to anyone but me. :S

In his cell, Coward dreams of the borders of the sea.

The wind is a whip at this height, sharpened by salt and split by the mist of sea water, the grit of sand caught in the air. He can feel it on the back of his neck, bare, licking under his collar while the waves roar against the rocks below. Dawn is late coming, hemmed back by storm clouds. He stand at the edge of the cliff and waits for the sun.

Squints against the white glare of the sky. Blinks.

A summer’s day twenty-five years in the past, sitting in deckchairs on the lawn. The wind is coming off the ocean, his hands are sticky with lemon juice. (Lemon rind pressed between his fingers, his mother looking on sourly, painted mouth pressed into a grimace. Both sting.) His father is telling him a story of his time in the Admiralty.

"You have to be careful when you start getting far out at sea, son."

"Why?"

"Sea monsters of course."

"Peter, you’ll give him nightmares."

His father looks pensive and does not argue.

Coward wakes at that moment. His cell is never dark, just dim. Everything in grey. The shadows cover him like a shroud, the life inside him is only a shallow heartbeat trapped in a husk, his soul is far, far gone.

"What kind of sea monsters, sir?" he asks, nine years old.

"Oh all kinds."

"What kinds?" Wriggling on his bed.

"Teeth as long as your arm. Huge tails that can knock a boat straight out of the water!"

"Aren’t you afraid?"

"Ah, well there's a lesson for you, my boy. Cowards are made of sterner stuff than that."

He closes his eyes and imagines himself back in his childhood bed. The book under his pillow has a broken spine. The pages have dark spots in places, parts where his fingertips have rubbed too often. The red ribbon of its bookmark is frayed at the end and probably would have fallen loose a long time ago if it had ever been moved from its place.

 _In the deep are large fish, which are not easily caught._

Words printed in small, grey letters at the bottom of the page. Above them lies a large coloured woodcut of the ocean. The green of the seawater is like the sound a shell makes when you press it against your ear, deep and reverberating, light and dark in alternating dappled patterns, expansive.

The green of the seawater is like Henry's eyes. The curling strength of the cresting waves, Henry's touch. Henry's voice, the current that takes him. Out past the gardens of seaweed, tangled like thick rope, past carp with thin red mouths. Into the deep where different shadows bloom immense in the distance. Whale song piercing his heart and pinning him in place.

Tomorrow he will hang and the ocean will fall into him.


End file.
